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Kozol: ‘I’m sick of begging’ Congress to do the right thing By Valerie Strauss This is an interview that veteran teacher Anthony Cody did with Jonathan Kozol and posted on his Education Week Teacher blog, Living in Dialogue. Kozol is a famed advocate for civil rights in education. His 1991 book, “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools,” detailed the vast differences between public schools for children living in poverty and kids who aren’t.

Extreme Weather Hits the Poor First – and Hardest

To our great shame, America now has • the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children; • the greatest inequality of incomes; • the lowest social mobility; • the lowest score on the UN’s index of “material well-being of children”; • the worst score on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index; • the highest expenditure on health care as a percentage of GDP, yet all this money accompanied by the highest infant mortality rate, the highest prevalence of mental health problems, the highest obesity rate, the highest percentage of people going without health care due to cost, the highest consumption of antidepressants per capita, and the shortest life expectancy at birth; • the next-to-lowest score for student performance in math and middling performance in science and reading; • the highest homicide rate; • the largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita; • the highest carbon dioxide emissions and the highest water consumption per capita; • the lowest score on Yale’s Environmental Performance Index (except for Belgium) and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Denmark); • the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of national income (except for Japan and Italy); • the highest military spending both in total and as a percentage of GDP; and • the largest international arms sales.